Wellington

Saturday 28^th February

Wow, what a day.  We had an ultra-leisurely morning because the ship wasn’t due to dock into Wellington until 11am.  Back on board time was 6.30pm.

Chris had booked an independent tour, Wanderlust, who picked us up from the ship side and took us for a sightseeing tour of Wellington and Mount Victoria.  The guy, Jack, was fantastic.  Not only did he drive the minibus he kept up a running commentary and was so knowledgeable!  Not only did he recite lots of facts and figures and interesting facts about the capital, Wellington, he could dredge up information on anything you asked him!  He was brilliant, humorous, engaging, interesting – wonderful.

He took us first to the Wellington sign … like Hollywood without the gun crime!

He then took us to some of the famous sights of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and even where Peter Jackson (Director) lived.  I had no idea that film production in New Zealand was so rife!

Some of the bays around the coast are stunningly beautiful with clear clear blue water.   Ignore the dodgy bird with the screwed up face!

He then took us up Mount Victoria, via the cable car, for some stunning views of the city and the port/bay area.  Zoom in, you can just about see the Arcadia! She’s right on the far right of the picture, almost at the edge, with the white hull.

At the top of the mountain there was a lookout area with a compass showing all the different capital cities and directions …. There is nothing between New Zealand and the Antarctic, which is why I have my gilet on, because the breeze coming from penguin-land can get a bit nippy!

Jack dropped us back in town where we knew we could get a shuttle bus back to the ship.  But we were hungry so we walked down to the waterfront to see if there was somewhere we could get a fish/prawn taco.  Oh, man – talk about being in the right place at the right time … we’d only stumbled on Wellington’s Dragon Boat Race, it was epic!

Anyway, we found a dockside eatery, The Crab Shack, and had the obligatory fish taco, which we were clearly too hungry to get a picture of!

A little tourist shopping and then back on the ship … Napier tomorrow, no tour booked but Chris tells me we are near to the town so it’s walkable.